Swiss shoe maker On employs one robot instead of 300 workers

The Swiss running shoe company On has opened its first production site for the innovative Lightspray shoe - a fully automated robotic process. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox "Around 300 people normally work on a conventional shoe," explained Caspar Coppetti, co-founder of On. With Lightspray technology, this work is done by a single robot. "And the shoe is ready in three minutes." The robot sprays an extremely thin, robust plastic thread in a spiral around a shoe last onto the existing sole so that the upper of the shoe is created in a single operation - without any seams or glue. The robots come from the industrial group ABB, with whom On worked closely on the development of the process. The shoe can be put on like a sock, as the seamless, wafer-thin upper material lies directly on the foot without shoe laces and adapts flexibly. In addition, CO2 emissions are reduced by 75% during production compared to conventional processes. Significantly fewer ...